Hull teachers union helps dismissed former teacher get job back.

A Hull High School guidance counselor and teacher dismissed in 2003 could be working at the school again.

School Supt. Kathleen I. Tyrell said that Alice Fulton will be reinstated as a high school guidance counselor.

“I expect she’ll be joining us sometime in January,” Tyrell said yesterday, “and I’m looking forward to meeting her and working with her.”

The case began May 30, 2003 when Fulton, then known as Alice Haseltine, was notified that she would not be rehired for a third school year that coming September.

Hired in 2001, Haseltine was one year shy of attaining “professional teacher status” that makes it more difficult for administrators to fire a teacher.

When a labor grievance filed on Haseltine’s behalf failed to resolve the issue, the Hull Teachers Association sought arbitration.

According to court documents, the arbitrator concluded that school authorities failed to meet certain requirements under the teachers collective bargaining agreement for evaluating the second-year teacher.

The arbitrator ruled that Haseltine should get her job back.

Superior Court Judge Suzanne DelVecchio later upheld the arbitrator’s right to make that decision.

The school committee appealed to the state Appeals Court which, in late August, upheld Judge DelVecchio’s decision.

On Nov. 29, the state Supreme Judicial Court denied the school committee’s application for further appellate review, so the superior court judgment still stands.

“Vindicated by the state’s highest court, Alice Fulton will finally have her job back in the Hull Public Schools,” the Massachusetts Teachers Association and Hull Teachers Association Deborah McCarthy said in a joint statement. A state association lawyer worked on the case.

Fulton is entitled to back pay, minus any earnings she may have had in the interim, the statement said.